Thursday, 7 February 2013

Missing Projects (Catch Up Part Two) Blitz Environment Project

I'll take this opportunity to show you
the work I produced for project two of the Game Production segment of
the Game Art course. The second project of my second year for Game
Production was another project from Blitz Games studios and based on
a live art test they set for prospective employees. It was another
good opportunity to gain experience of actual projects set by real
game studios.

We were provided with two building frontages in
the Blitz folder, the task was to create a third building to sit
between the two provided befitting the age, style and location of the
current buildings. We were given some examples of styles but
obviously I wanted to do some concepting before hand to explore
various possible outcomes.

I initially brainstormed some ideas
for various building types, I then chose six of my favourites and
began to gather as much possible visual reference, mainly from the
internet to support my concepts.

My final concepts are below;

My initial thoughts were that I wanted
my model to be unique and, although having to befit the provided two
buildings, I wanted mine to also make an impression, I didn't want it
to completely blend with the other buildings, I also wanted my
building to be a focal point inside the scene.

Initially
I decided to model the strip building, I thought it would be
something different and it would be a good idea to do a day time
scene and a night time scene in which I could illuminate the neon
lighted signs as well as learn how to create neon signs once imported
into UDK. After some thought I couldn’t see any reason why I
couldn’t merge two of my building concepts into one model, and as I
also quite liked the idea of the billboard building, I didn’t want
to do it on its own as the rest of the building looked quite plain so
I decided to model the strip club with a billboard on top of it.

To
begin modelling I used elements from the provided Blitz models in
order to give myself a foundation to begin working from. I took the
Blitz models right down to their most basic forms and then began
modelling on top of them. The odd thing about this project is that no
definite tri limit (or texture limit) was set but a rough guideline
was given by suggesting to use the provided Blitz models as reference
for tri limit. The Blitz buildings were around 5000 tri’s each so I
decided to try and stay around this count with my own model. I also
decided to stick as closely as possible to my concepts whilst
modelling so that I could finish the model with the desired look.

At
the beginning of the project I was very satisfied with the outcome of
my concepts and felt like the project was going to go well but now
I’m at the end I feel because a lot of work has been done in just a
short amount of time the work hasn't been to the best of my ability
and lacking in most areas for the sake of just getting it done in the
time frame.

The
biggest positive for me in this project has been learning how to use
and implement NDO2 within my work. It seems to be a very powerful
piece of software and with further use I believe it is going to
complement my work greatly in the future.

I
am not completely satisfied with the final model for my building. I
think it looks interesting from top to bottom but I do also feel that
some areas are lacking quite a bit, particularly the middle section
were there is just a row of windows which looks quite boring and
breaks the detail between the sign and billboard at the top and the
entrance and signs at the bottom. I also feel that some extra detail
could of potentially been added at the bottom of the model.

I
am also not completely happy with the outcome of the renders, one
reason is that I was a little unsure how exactly to set up the camera
to properly demonstrate the environment scene. The other issue I had
was with the outcome of the night-time scene as I would of liked more
time in which to research and set up lighting, in particular the
glowing neon signs for the night renders.